By Akram Tariq Khan

The pandemic has drastically transformed consumer behavior with an accelerated shift to e-commerce as brick and mortar stores became inaccessible. Google trends reveal how online grocery searches hit an all-time high when a lockdown was announced. Although panic buying is a significant contributor to the initial spurt, an upward trend is still evident.

An influx of first-time online buyers, primarily from Tier I and II cities, should be a key focus area for e-commerce organizations. According to a 2020 Shopify report, the pandemic has led to 86% of Indians adopting online shopping.

Brands have tried to keep up – introducing vernacular language support, expanding serviceable pin codes for COD, offers for first-time buyers, so on and so forth. But it is not enough – the critical pain point of smoothing the shift remains unaddressed. Let us dive deeper into how the post-pandemic landscape shall look like:

Social commerce at the forefront
According to a new Bain & Company report, social commerce in India would be a $70 billion market by 2030.
Millennials or aged, tech-savvy or technophobic, Users living in a metro or a village – everybody is most comfortable using social media, particularly WhatsApp.

With the introduction of UPI payments and in-app shopping, WhatsApp is positioning itself as the platform of choice for social commerce. First-time buyers have a hard time ordering online.

E-commerce brands like JioMart have started accepting orders on WhatsApp. A resource-intensive bet (requires sophisticated chatbots working in tandem with a large customer service team), yet a necessity to win the technically challenged customers.

Conversational commerce
Chris Messina, the inventor of hashtags, had predicted in 2015 that regular people would come to expect to talk to brands and companies through channels that they’d previously dedicated to friends and family and coworkers. It is true today.

Thanks to bots and conversation automation, the “no-reply” email addresses that were all too common in the one-way era of commercial conversations are rapidly on the decline. If a company or brand wants to talk to their customer — either in public broadcast channels like social media or in private contexts like email — they better be well prepared to listen too, and then to respond in a meaningful and contextual way.

Fortunately, many tools are available for businesses and brands to become more conversational at scale.
Advancements in machine learning quality and affordability, artificial intelligence, voice computing technologies, and conversation automation tools are critical enablers.

Consumer expectations and customer sophistication are catalysts driving the transformation — for businesses to thrive in the era of social media and not gradually lose touch with their customers, they have to become more “relational” instead of transactional.

While growth hacking has been a big trend in recent years, it still costs far less to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one. A relational approach to customer loyalty is one that builds trust, familiarity, and engagement over time. It is a far superior strategy that must be at the center of all companies’ and brands’ product, marketing, and communications plans going forward.

For companies that conduct any business on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Shopify, Amazon, on mobile or the web, conversational commerce is without a doubt only going to increase in relevance in the future. Learning, preparing, planning for, and engaging with this reality must start now.

Conversational commerce, in tandem with social proof, does wonder. It leverages human psychology and increases the customer’s tendency to imitate the actions of others. For instance, what do drop shippers do differently to achieve millions of orders – they create quirky short demonstration videos. It is the same model employed by “as seen on TV” infomercials.

Indianize – vocal for local
Offering credit is a common practice in smaller cities wherein social ties are more robust. Introducing ‘buy now, pay later’ not only reduces the need to trust a brand but also compensates for the missing ‘udhaar’ (credit) practice in e-commerce.

As regional apps like ShareChat record close to a 200% jump in user base, it is clear how adding support for regional languages is a must as the new consumer is from Tier II and III cities. RedSeer Consulting published an e-commerce report claiming 88 percent growth in the sector during this festive season compared to last year, primarily driven by four crore shoppers from Tier-II+ cities.

The product’s value proposition should be relatable to consumers in these demographics. For instance, a brand that manufactures in India could showcase how it generates employment, adding to its economy. Digital marketing creatives should include vernacular language content. Indian models, instead of stock videos, should be featured in advertisements.

-The author is the co-founder of YourLibaas, a UAE-based designer apparel company. Views expressed are personal.

Also Read: Consumer marketing trends across B2C industries in 2021